News

Ripple Makes Deal With MoneyGram

Ripple solidified a two-year agreement with Moneygram, the world’s second-largest money service provider, the partnership will have Ripple overseeing all of their foreign exchange transactions along with the digital currency aspects of their business. Transactions will be facilitated using Ripples xRapid global platform. This brings Moneygram, with approximately $600 Billion a day in sales, into the digital markets.

Ripple presumably was quite eager to make the deal, buying $30 Million worth of Moneygram shares at a rate of $4.10 a piece, leaving Moneygram with an option to share them another $20million in shares at the same price. At the time Moneygram was trading at around $1.45, making Ripples rate over three times above the fair market value for a share of Moneygram.

Presumably, xRapid will be able to take any fiat currency sent by the receiver, convert it and transfer through Ripple’s blockchain then reconvert to any fiat currency desired by the receiver. Ripple’s blockchain will be able to electronically track both parties information, verify a timestamp on when and where it was sent and picked up, all electronically.

Currently, Moneygram has to have pre-funded accounts to act as collateral for the $600 Bn in daily volume, this will no longer be necessary seeing that ripple offers near-instant transactions through their blockchain.

In addition to the 30 million and freeing of their collateral xRapid will provide Moneygram with a rate reduction from around $30 a transaction to mere pennies. Transaction verification time will drop to seconds versus 15 minutes.

All and all it’s hard to argue that Moneygram made out well in this partnership, which showed with its stock value rising to $3.07 a share within 24 hours of the announced partnership, bringing the ROI to just over 111%.

On the other side of the coin, the Ripple community has been throwing quite a fit being that in the past 48 hours, Ripple has yielded less than 1%. The angriest are shouting market manipulation, while the true believers continue to remind XRP enthusiasts to trade the charts, that XRP stays true to the technicals, and will not be influenced by the news in either direction.

Objectively speaking, it does seem a little fishy, doesn’t it? Didn’t we saw Ripple fly up to nearly $4.00 a coin off of seemingly rumors, now a partnership with the second largest money service provider in the world can’t move it more than 1%? Where’s the fun in that?